Thursday, January 16, 2014

After an extended vacation, American Silver Eagles are back in production (Kitco discusses it here). As you may recall, the U.S. Mint suspended production of 2013 silver eagles back on December 9th in order to make way for the 2014 silver eagles. It's a good thing this four weeks plus halt coincided perfectly with a time of low demand/low interest for these bullion coins - NOT! What it did do is raise already healthy premiums even higher because investors really like and want these coins (this was the subject of a recent article on the Bloomberg site which you can see here ). So the buying continued during the weeks the U.S. Mint meticulously changed the dies from a "3" to a"4". Hopefully they were also able to stock up on blanks (planchets) during this time so investors can enjoy several months of uninterrupted production and sales. Here are the 2013 silver eagle totals in case you haven't seen them before.

U S MINT Silver Eagle Sales 2013

January 7,498,000; February 3,368,500;
March 3,356,500; April 4,087,000;
May 3,458,500; June 3,275,000;
July 4,406,500; August 3,625,000;
September 3,013,000; October 3,087,000;
November 2,300,000; December 1,200,000

Total 42,675,000

The Canadian counterpart to the American Silver Eagle, the Silver Maple Leaf, has a new look for 2014. The addition of radial lines from the center of the coin outward plus a micro-engraved security mark on the reverse of the coin make for a stunning silver bullion coin. More info and detailed pictures of this coin appeared on the Coinupdate web site and can be found here. Counterfeiters will be hard-pressed to master these new security features. It reminds me of the battle between the safe manufacturers and safe crackers in years gone by. No matter what the manufacturers did, the safecrackers always found a way to break in. Finally, at least one manufacturer came up with what they felt was the ultimate solution. They incorporated a vial of nitroglycerine inside the safe so that anyone trying to punch their way in would have their ticket punched permanently in a very explosive way. No report on how many lost their life this way.